


We'll Make it on the Run (alt)

by NoHolds



Series: We'll Make it On The Run [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:45:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoHolds/pseuds/NoHolds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max is and has always been a terrible friend, but god, she tries.</p>
<p>(An alternate chapter one to my fic 'We'll make it on the Run'. Slowburn Pricefield ft. roadtrips and time travel sickness. Written before Episode 5)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Make it on the Run (alt)

**Author's Note:**

> The original, non-canon chapter one to We'll Make it on the Run.

1\. Oregon 

These are the eight texts Max and Chloe exchange in the week after saving the world:

(Sunday, 1 am) Chloe: **Damn. Some week, huh?**

This was exactly twenty-four hours after Max, bloody-nosed and shivering, had staggered out of the ocean with seaweed tangled in her hair and salt water drying on her skin.

Chloe and Max had sat on the beach, arms wrapped around each other; Max shaking with deep-sea chill and leftover adrenaline and Chloe half-incoherent with pain, her left hand clutched tight against her side, bent at an odd angle.

They sat on that beach, watching the sun rise on a day that was not supposed to come, speechless, because they _did it,_ it was _over,_ both of them cold and bloody and shaken, and Max- 

Max did not know what to say.

(Tuesday, 4 pm) Max: **Haha, right?**

Because that first week Chloe and her were reunited-

That first week, there wasn't _time_ to be awkward, not time for five years' separation, it had been one blurry, uncertain, _whirlwind_ of a week.

But now, in the breathing space of narrowly avoided apocalypse, Max could _feel_ all of the distance between them, all the letters she never sent.

Every conversation is stilted words and loaded silence, and in all of those silences Max can feel all of the weight of five years without a text, of William's death, of Rachel's body in a shallow grave and Rachel's friendship bracelet still looped around Chloe's wrist. So-

(Tuesday, 11:59 pm) Chloe: **Insightful as ever, Maaaxeronni.**

Max knows how Chloe texts drunk, now, and it's strange, because part of it feels like they crammed all of the years they should have had together into one week, into five days of sneaking out late and walking on train tracks and going to parties and trading double-dog-dare-you kisses, but-

(Wednesday, 10 am) Max: **How's the head? :P**

But this angry Chloe did so much growing up without Max, and she is more than half a stranger, and Max thinks she can see the Chloe she knew in there somewhere, but that old Chloe is buried under grief and rage and half a decade, and this new Chloe is someone the old Max might've crossed the street to avoid.

And-

(Thursday, 10 pm) Chloe: **Dude, I'm bored. Let's go for a drive.**

And Max doesn't have many friends at Blackwell for a reason. She's not very good at talking to strangers.

(Friday, 11:30 pm) Chloe: _ **Max.**_

There had been a hasty funeral arranged for Rachel, and Chloe had been all in black but her bright, bright hair, and Max had gone only because everyone else in town was going. She had never felt so out of place, had never worn much black, had never even _known_ Rachel except for a week of Chloe's

_Rachel would have loved this,_

and

_I wish Rachel was here,_

and,

_I loved her_

And Max feels like she's _intruding,_ on the funeral, on _Chloe,_ and she's always been nosey, but-

(Saturday, 12 am) Chloe: **I know you have your phone on you, I can see you on Tumblr.**

(Saturday, 12:15 am) Chloe: **Fine. Don't know why I expected you to keep in touch this time.**

Max winced at her phone. That was low.

She types out a response. Deletes it. Types it out again. Flicks off her phone.

It's _low,_ but not _uncalled for,_ is the problem, and Max _knows_ she has to do something, can't let this friendship slip away again.

So she gets dressed in the dark, tries not to make too much noise sneaking out. It's not like she was gonna be able to get to sleep anyway.

Chloe's sitting in her car when Max arrives, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

She keeps reaching for her keys, pulling her hand back, reaching for them, pulling her hand back again.

Max watches, for a moment, and pads forwards to knock on the window.

Chloe jumps half out of her skin, head whipping towards the sound almost comically fast, but when she sees Max standing in the driveway she relaxes. Scowls. Unlocks the passenger-side door.

Max slides in, and all of what she wants to say drains away, sitting there in Chloe's beat-up pick-up. So she fiddles with the sleeves of her jacket, stares at the bobblehead on the dashboard for thirty seconds of finger-drumming silence

“ _What?_ ” Chloe snaps eventually, dropping her hands from the steering wheel.

Max shrugs. “What?”

“Why are you _here,_ Max?”

Max thinks, _because we're friends, because I want to say sorry, because I'm worried about you, because the silence in my room feels like drowning,_ but none of it feels right, so she says,“You were texting me-”

Chloe shakes her head, jerky and abrasive. “Cut the bullshit, Max.”

Max shrugs. Doesn't know what else to say.

Chloe snorts, after a moment of silence. “Typical.” Her hands are back on the wheel, the keys, fingers drumming, twitchy.

Things had been tense with Chloe since Max had gotten back, but it'd been a different kind of tense.

Tense like promise. Tense like the pulling in the pit of Max's stomach at the pool, tense like the heavy, _heavy_ silence in Chloe's room that next morning, all warm liquid light and possibility.

There, in the car, there is not that sort of tension.

This tension is like livewire, the pause between lightning and thunder, Max can feel Chloe about to snap. Do something stupid. She always had been the impulsive one.

“ _Fuck”_ Chloe Says, kicks at the floor of the car.

“What?” Max twists to look at Chloe, finally meets her eyes. “What's _wrong,_ Chloe?”

Chloe looks away. Drums her fingers on the steering wheel. Looks back to meet Max's eyes again, her expression a mix of anger and exhaustion and grief that makes Max's stomach twist, and she spits,

“I swear to god Max, I don't want to see this shithole state again 'till I'm sure all other ones are worse.”

She puts the keys into the ignition. Drops her hand. Pulls the keys out again a moment later.

Max glances in the rearview mirror, notices for the first time Chloe's beat-up duffel bag in the back seat.

She thinks, for a moment, about going back to school like nothing had happened, trying to pay attention to the new photography teacher like the last one hadn't been a murderer.

And she doesn't-

Suddenly doesn't feel like any of it's _real_ after everything she's seen, and so she shrugs.

“Let's go, then.”

Chloe goes dead-still at that, for a second, then blows a breath out through puffed cheeks.

“Damn, Caulfield. Didn't think you had it in you.” Chloe's leg has stopped jumping, and the tension's drained out of her shoulders like flicking a switch. The ignition rumbles to life a moment later.

Max shrugs. Rolls her window down. Takes a lungfull of midnight air.

Chloe just laughs and puts her foot on the gas, and they leave Arcadia Bay in the rearview.


End file.
